Exclusive: Anti-Reawakening Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Talks Roles in Family, Religion and Hard Work in Raising a Rust Belt
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy spoke to Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday about his roots in America’s Rust Belt, detailing the influence of family, hard work and religion in shaping the person he is today. cause a resurgence of “American exceptionalism”.
Ramswamy, 37, announced his candidacy for the presidency on Tuesday with a populist video that claimed the United States was experiencing a “crisis of national identity” resulting from a lack of purpose and meaning as American society deviated from the values of “faith, patriotism, diligence and family”. Ramaswamy told Breitbart News that these themes played a pivotal role during his “middle-class” upbringing in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The highly successful entrepreneur, who founded several biotech companies and reportedly amassed a fortune of $600 million by the age of 31 in 2016, told Breitbart News how the perseverance and hard work of his parents, Indian immigrants who came to America with little, still leaves him confused.
His father worked at the General Electric (GE) plant in Evendale, north of Cincinnati, and the candidate recalled turbulent times for his family as a child in the 1990s, when “[former GE CEO] Jack Welch arranged a whole series of layoffs at the plant.
It “created some real job insecurity risks for our family and so it was probably one of the most stressful parts of growing up,” Ramaswami said. “But in the end my dad found an opportunity to keep a stable career there if he went to law school and got a law degree. And so he took night classes and went to law school at Northern Kentucky University after working full time for four years while my mom also worked full time and their two kids. And frankly, as a father of two, I have no idea, I have no idea how they did it.”
Ramaswamy laughed at the fact that when he was in sixth grade, he often sat at the back of the lecture hall at Northern Kentucky University while his father was studying law to become a patent lawyer. On other occasions, he and his brother played the piano in a nursing home while their mother worked as a geriatric nurse with Alzheimer’s patients.
“That’s how the piano became a staple of our upbringing,” he said.
He told Breitbart News that he “grew up in … an immigrant family” where “there was a huge focus on education.” He attended public schools in elementary and high school, noting that education was not always the focus of some of his peers as some “came from more difficult backgrounds”.
“I think my parents had to make a difficult decision when I was finishing eighth grade. You know, they weren’t quite in a position to comfortably pay for a private school,” he explained. “At the same time, they wanted to put us in a position where we could excel academically, and so they made the decision to send me to St. Xavier’s High School nonetheless.”
Ramaswami, who eventually graduated from Catholic high school with a valedictorian, said the experience was “life-changing in a good way” as he was interested in theology as a subject of study, finding “common features” between Catholicism and Hinduism, its religion.
“You know, I think that the thought of being a non-Catholic in a Catholic school, one or one of the lonely Hindus in that school, really made me understand and accept a religious point of view that was different from my own, and actually, to then rediscover the community on the other side of it,” he explained. “So I think we had such a strict family about academics like Learn Science, Learn Math, but back then at St. X we studied religion in the same way.”
“I think it almost made me look at it a little differently than classmates who, you know, might have grown up with it, and vice versa,” he said. “And maybe if I went to a Hindu school, it would be the same for me: “Well, okay, whatever.” While, you know, for me at St. X things were different and that is one of the reasons why I was so attached to the school and actually remain on the school board today.”
From there, he earned a biology degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale University and founded “multi-billion dollar companies by getting married, starting a family and following his faith in God,” as he noted in his video. However, he then stated: “The sad thing is that if I had been born 20 years later, I think my story would have been impossible.”
Ramaswami expanded on this on Wednesday evening.
“The fact that I was able to thrive in a free market capitalist system and also get married, start a family, and follow my faith in God – and not apologize for all of that – I think was unique to the moment I was living in, according to compared to the 20 years that have passed since then,” he said. “And to be honest, the fact that it’s true makes me sad, but it’s also part of what motivates me to do it.”
“I think the American moment requires an answer to the question of individual identity,” he told a handful of reporters at the Red Arrow diner earlier in the day. “What does it mean to be a citizen of a nation, and what does it mean to be a citizen of that nation? That’s the whole ball game right now. It’s all ballgame in this campaign, but I think it’s all ballgame and where this country is… Rediscover what America is; that’s the real question.”
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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.
